Your Humble Scribe

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Wow

Robert Heinlein is often quoted as saying, "An armed society is a polite society."

In my experience nowhere has this been as apparent as this convention. Everyone, from the NRA Media staff to 99% of the vendors to the people wandering the aisles, has been as courteous and accomodating as they can be.

Well, for the most part. Several bloggers -- friends both old and new -- have taken over a table in the corner of the Media Room as base camp for our perambulations throughout the convention, and as I sit here, I can look over to the long table occupied by traditional media ... and the disdain of not only the traditional media, but the traditonal gun media, for us lowly, plebian bloggers is palpable.

I'm not sure why. Not sure I care why, to tell the truth.

However, this disdain does not extend to the vendors. There is no readily-accessible second-level OP that would allow me to take a panoramic picture of the convention floor, so I looked around and the Lone Wolf display had a second story that the Lone Wolf folks were using as an office.

So, I wandered up and asked if I could climb up to the top and use it to take a picture. They gave my Media pass a bit of the old hairy eye-ball, until I mentioned that I was "just" a blogger. Next thing I know, I'm given a friendly and cheerful escort to the roof and encouraged to take what pictures I wanted.

To my surprise, this wasn't unusual. I wanted to talk to FN about both their new FN-FNS pistol and the 303P Less-Lethal pistol. When they saw the Media pass, they asked which outlet I was with as they steered me towards their Media/PR expert. When I told them I was a blogger, we stopped, they asked if I was "Going to blog this?" and when I answered yes, I got to talk to the engineers, the manager and the training gentleman.

I wonder if gun bloggers (and bloggers in general) are quicker to publish and more likely to publish than are some traditional media. Why expend time and resources on a reporter who might not get your story out for three or four months, vs. someone who can have his or her good and bad feedback out to an international readership within days? Just my $.08 (two cents adjusted for inflation).

I had the same experience. Last year I had to ask people to take my card. This year I had people asking me if I'd like to apply for a T&E gun.

As for the other media, some were friendlier than others. I think we'll find that to be the way it works. Some will look at us as competition or the unwashed masses, some will look at us as a resource, and some will look at us as just another guy in the press box.